RACING REPORT FROM LEOPARDSTOWN: ARAZAN, THE colt once rated at least the equal of his illustrious stable companion, Sea The Stars, will continue his career as a four-year-old after time was called yesterday on him racing in 2009.
The Aga Khan-owned colt was touted by many as a potential 2,000 Guineas winner in the spring but a nasty chest infection put him on the sidelines where he has remained ever since.
“He won’t be out this season. We would be looking at October by the time he was back, if at all, and by then all the major races would be ruled out. It would be just too late,” John Oxx said yesterday.
“We will train him through the winter with a view to a four-year-old career.”
Arazan won the Group Two Futurity at the Curragh as a juvenile and was rated shorter in ante-post betting for the Newmarket Guineas than Sea The Stars for much of the winter.
A number of weeks before the classic both he and Sea The Stars worked after racing at Leopardstown where the common view was Arazan went the better of the pair. However, it was Sea The Stars who progressed to classic glory at Newmarket and then Epsom.
“It is very frustrating because he was in super shape pre-Guineas. He hadn’t had a hitch all winter and spring, was in great shape, and then got this infection,” Oxx added.
The Curragh trainer played down reports of Sea The Stars also racing on as a four-year-old although if ground conditions play havoc with plans this autumn there remains a chance the world’s top rated horse could race on.
“I have never discussed the idea with the owners. Anything is possible, and if what we would regard as the normal sequence of races in a three-year-old career were ruled out because of ground conditions, then presumably the idea of racing as a four-year-old would come up. But it hasn’t been discussed.”
Sea The Stars is being trained for the Juddmonte at York and afterwards faces a mouth-watering clash with the Irish Derby winner Fame And Glory in Leopardstown’s Irish Champion Stakes next month.
“He has been lucky enough to get his ground in the Guineas, the Derby and the Eclipse so hopefully he will get the same in the Champion,”
Oxx added. “The opposition looks like it will be tough. Fame And Glory is a very good horse, a stayer with a turn of foot.”
Fame And Glory’s trainer Aidan O’Brien reported yesterday: “Leopardstown is the plan. Dropping back to 10 furlongs shouldn’t be an issue as he has so much pace.”
Mourayan hasn’t been seen since finishing third to Fame And Glory in the Irish Derby and remains on course for the Doncaster St Leger, with Oxx saying: “He could run in the Ballyroan Stakes at Leopardstown next week. He is in the Great Voltigeur too but he likes a bit of cut in the ground.”
